Searchlights on Health: The Science of EugenicsJefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Philosophy
Searchlights on Health: The Science of Eugenics
Jefferis, B. G. (Benjamin Grant)
Eugenics; Hygiene; Marriage; Medicine, Popular; Sexual ethics
8. THE BEGINNING OF LICENTIOUSNESS.--Man it seldom drives from
society. Do what he may, woman, aye, virtuous and even pious woman
rarely excludes him from her list of visitors. But where is the point
of propriety?--immoral transgression should exclude either sex from
respectable society. Is it that one false step which now constitutes
the boundary between virtue and vice? Or rather, the discovery of that
false step? Certainly not! but it is all that leads to, and precedes
and induces it. It is this courting without marrying. This is the
beginning of licentiousness, as well as its main, procuring cause, and
therefore infinitely worse than its consummation merely.
9. SEARING THE SOCIAL AFFECTIONS.--He has seared his social affections
so deeply, so thoroughly, so effectually, that when, at last, he
wishes to marry, he is incapable of loving. He marries, but is
necessarily cold-hearted towards his wife, which of course renders her
wretched, if not jealous, and reverses the faculties of both towards
each other; making both most miserable for life. This induces
contention and mutual recrimination, if not unfaithfulness, and
imbitters the marriage relations through life; and well it may.
10. UNHAPPY MARRIAGES.--This very cause, besides inducing most of that
unblushing public and private prostitution already alluded to, renders
a large proportion of the marriages of the present day unhappy. Good
people mourn over the result, but do not once dream of its cause. They
even pray for moral reform, yet do the very things that increase the
evil.
11. WEEPING OVER HER FALLEN SON.--Do you see yonder godly mother,
weeping over her fallen son, and remonstrating with him in tones of a
mother's tenderness and importunity? That very mother prevented that
very son marrying the girl he dearly loved, because she was poor, and
this interruption of his love was the direct and procuring cause of
his ruin; for, if she had allowed him to marry this beloved one, he
never would have thought of giving his "strength unto strange
women." True, the mother ruined her son ignorantly, but none the less
effectually.
12. SEDUCTION AND RUIN.--That son next courts another virtuous
fair one, engages her affections, and ruins her, or else leaves her
broken-hearted, so that she is the more easily ruined by others, and
thus prepares the way for her becoming an inmate of a house "whose
steps take hold on hell." His heart is now indifferent, he is ready
for anything.
13. THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.--I say then, with emphasis, that no man
should ever pay his addresses to any woman, until he has made his
selection, not even to aid him in making that choice. He should first
make his selection intellectually, and love afterward. He should go
about the matter coolly and with judgment, just as he would undertake
any other important matter. No man or woman, when blinded by love, is
in a fit state to judge advantageously as to what he or she requires,
or who is adapted to his or her wants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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